• a barista chatting with you as your CS Lewis Latte is made, scones in the oven, bursts of laughter, the hum of Market St. traffic, 200-year-old floor boards gently creaking beneath your feet, the courthouse bell tolling across Market Street;
• cardinals or robins giving a little concert in the boxwoods, live music on the patio, the smell of fresh-cut grass, the roses blooming in the front yard, the lilac, the sound of an old friend bumping into you here, calling out your name and asking how you’ve been.

• the little gasp as someone walks through the blue front door for the first time, best friends catching up, children meeting friends in the back playroom or on a playdate on the patio, a pastor counseling a man to keep investing in his marriage, a teen talking with her mentor, Kwame Alexander encountering his muse as he wrote one of his books in the main dining room, a customer journaling, or sketching, or reading;
• a group of Cornerstone teens holding a praise and worship concert on this stage; a Bible study or men’s or women’s small group, gathering to discover new graces together and pray;
• the conversations at the café among law enforcement, fire-fighters, attorneys, county staff, veterans and other quiet servants who make up the “connective tissue” of our special community; a family’s “happy place” to hang out and play a board game;
• the place of a couple’s first date; or the couples who met for the first time within these walls, found love, and went on to marry (we know of at least three!); of a stranger approaching us the week after we opened and saying, “We haven’t met, but I’ve been praying for you and this place for many years, and now my prayers have been answered.”  

• as a shy 16-year-old starts his or her first day on the job here, and emerges two years later with the confidence that comes from serving your community;

• as a skeptic of faith walks through the doors and glimpses a new way forward, perhaps an icon, a welcoming word, an old book or church pew, or the way the mid-afternoon sunlight softly plays on the beveled glass windows. 

• as our staff, whose dedication is the beating heart of this special place, show up for their next shift to serve our amazing community. 
• as my beautiful wife Ever blazed the trail,opened the café while I was working full-time in Arlington; while she covered early-morning and late-night shifts in those first years and beyond; as she brought our 3-year-old Charlie in tow, setting him up with crayons and paper within eyesight as she served customers.  
• and as she kept reminding us when the chips were down: keep pressing forward, because God is doing something special here in our community.   
• as she told a journalist just a few weeks after opening in 2014, “Our goal is to provide delicious food and drinks, but beyond that, we hope people will be touched by the spirit of hospitality at Trinity House. We want the warmth and beauty of the café to serve people’s deeper needs and bring them together to create a culture that is worthy of the human person.”

• of how in each of our lives, God the Father welcomes us to his table, to his love. 
• of how the Holy Spirit listens to each of us, accompanying us, interceding for us.   
• of how Jesus serves us by his life, death and resurrection,and beckons us to follow him to our Father’s house.

A few weeks before we opened, in the fall of 2014, Ever and I found some free church pews on Craigslist and went up to an African-American Baptist church that was closing in Baltimore. The elderly pastor met us and said, “I’ve done some good preaching over these pews. Take good care of them.” Only later did we learn that two generations of Methodist ministers lived at Trinity House in the 1800s, that the café basically is in a former parsonage.